Tahini Shortbread opens sesame
Recipe: Tahini Shortbread Cookies
The pale, nutty paste is a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine, but tahini's smooth, creamy consistency also makes for a dreamy cookie full of good stuff
By Louise Crosby
Here on this side of the Atlantic, we know tahini best as an ingredient in hummus and baba ghanoush, or as a sauce for falafel and shawarma sandwiches. But in countries of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and beyond, this lovely stuff has been a staple for thousands of years, an indispensable ingredient in countless dishes savoury and sweet. They even put it on ice cream.
Just to refresh, tahini is pure sesame paste made from white sesame seeds that are soaked, then hulled, gently roasted, and ground to a silky smooth, creamy consistency. The paste, blended with garlic, lemon juice, salt and cumin, and thinned with a bit of water, becomes tahini sauce, also used in countless ways. The best sesame seeds come from the Humera region of Ethiopia, and the best tahini is emulsif...
Vanilla is exotic, the proof is in the pudding
Food Recipe: Vanilla Bean Rice Pudding
These days, when people say 'vanilla' they often mean boring, but the Mexican orchid flower responsible for the long, fragrant bean is anything but average -- and the same goes for this vanilla bean rice pudding
By Louise Crosby
This is turning out to be the summer of vanilla rice pudding. I’ve made this recipe – from food blogger Molly Wizenberg featured in bon appétit magazine – three times in the past two weeks, and as I write these words, another batch is burbling away on the stove. Eaten warm or icy cold from the refrigerator, it is rich and creamy and bursting with vanilla flavour, and we can’t get enough of it.
I’ve made the pudding twice with a vanilla bean and once with a generous tablespoon of Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon vanilla bean paste, which makes an excellent substitute if your store runs out of beans. I also threw in a fat cinnamon stick during the cooking of the last batch, making the flavours even more ...
OMC! Orange Marmalade Cake
Food: Recipe - Orange Marmalade Cake
Voulez-vous cuisiner avec gloire ce coir? Orange Marmalade may be hard to make, but you need to avoid the psychedelic store-bought stuff in a jar if you want the right ingredient for a tart, candied dreamcake
By Louise Crosby
My love affair with marmalade began only recently when my friend Amanda gave me a jar she had made from the winter crop of knobbly-skinned Seville oranges. Her recipe comes from Ian Tamblyn’s great aunt Alicia, Ian being Amanda’s partner as well as a prolific, award-winning folk singer, songwriter, adventurer and playwright. Making Aunt Alicia’s marmalade is a three-day process that involves squeezing and reserving the juice, steeping the seeds and pith in water overnight, boiling the rinds and letting them sit, boiling the rinds again with sugar, the juice, and the pit-soaking water, sterilizing jars and melting wax. Quite a lot of work, but in the end she has exquisite marmalade, not as stiff as commercial ...
Love tastes like Oatmeal Cookies
Food: Recipe - Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies
Making oatmeal cookies the way mom used to make is more than soul-comforting nostalgia, the results are one of life's most reliable pleasures.
By Louise Crosby
Before my mother moved into her retirement residence, where units come with microwaves but not stoves, she was a one-woman, cookie-making machine. She made Swedish cookies, sugar cookies, pinwheel cookies, chocolate cookies, peanut butter cookies, and more recently, crackle-topped, chewy-crispy ginger cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. She gave away almost everything she made, to her neighbours, to her kids, to anyone who came along. She was famous for her cookies.
My mother is not sad to give up baking – after all, she just turned 90, Happy Birthday Mom! – but lots of people visit in her new place and, following tradition, she would like to serve them a cookie with their cup of tea. I feel a certain responsibility to help her out, having a big kitchen as I do, so ...
Steamed Maple Puddings transcend presentation insecurities
Food: Recipes - Steamed Maple Puddings
They may not come out as pretty as a Donna Hay concoction, but even a less-photogenic maple steamed pudding is a sweet, soulful pleasure that's hard to beat
By Louise Crosby
Ok, here’s the story. I was so seduced by the photo of steamed maple pudding in Donna Hay’s gorgeous book The New Classics that I had to make it, had to share the recipe with you. I LOVE maple syrup and I LOVE pudding, so the combination seemed winning.
What wasn’t winning, however, was the time I spent running around kitchen stores looking for the right ramekins, the way my puddings didn’t slip cleanly out of those ramekins like Donna’s but were raggedy around the edges, and the way the maple syrup sauce did not run down the sides of the puddings in an enticing way but sunk right into the cake batter. And finally, I whipped the cream a little too hard, so it sits atop each pudding like a hat rather than relaxing downwards, all creamy and luscious. Some ...
A river to skate away on, and yummy cup to warm up with
Food: Recipe - Chocolat Chaud
Skating down Ottawa's famed Rideau Canal is an undeniable thrill, but after a day on ice, homemade chocolat chaud is the best way to relieve the bitter chill - without added sugar
By Louise Crosby
OTTAWA -- It’s the first week of Winterlude and the world’s largest skateway on the Rideau Canal has already closed because the ice has melted into a big wet puddle. The first three days of this annual winter festival were a big success, a carnival atmosphere in fact, with ice carvings and snow sculptures, pancake breakfasts, concerts, beaver tails and poutine. And of course, until the weather turned warm, skating.
Before we go any further, and just to put everything into context, here’s a refresher on the Rideau Canal and its famous skateway (thank you Wikipedia): The canal itself, built in 1832, is 202 kilometres in length, and connects the City of Ottawa to Kingston, on Lake Ontario. The oldest continually operated canal system in North ...
Greening the bleak midwinter
Food: Recipe - Broccoli-Quinoa Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
The colour palette may be all black and white this time of year, but you can treat your palate to a rainbow of taste with this delicious salad that feels like spring
By Louise Crosby
The winter colour palette is bleak but beautiful, all black and white and shades of grey. Snow has a way of softening the hard lines, of putting some magic into the landscape. There’s nothing prettier, for example, than a dusting of snow on bare branches, or an expanse of rooftops iced like cakes in white frosting. The only problem is that, at some point, our eyes long for colour.
Many go south for their fix of pink bougainvillea and turquoise sea. Others buckle up their bootstraps and carry on, their eyes fixed on the horizon, where spring will appear. I’m in that second category, toughing it out, grasping at little life rafts to help me get through, life rafts like this bright green Broccoli-Quinoa Salad with Buttermilk ...
Don’t die: It’s Year of the Pulses
Food: Recipe - Curried Chickpea Soup with Tomatoes, Ginger and Cilantro
The humble pulse could hold the key to a better future with a low carbon footprint and sky-high nutritional value
By Louise Crosby
Unless you were sleeping over the New Year, you will know that 2016 is International Year of Pulses. This piece of news might have struck you as slightly hilarious. With such serious issues facing humankind – climate change, the refugee crisis, Donald Trump – the United Nations dedicates an entire year to the celebration of lentils, chick peas, dried beans and peas?
It’s actually not so crazy. First off, these humble members of the legume family are nutritious – full of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals – and low in fat. They can help manage diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. They’re also inexpensive and contribute to environmental sustainability. According to Pulse Canada, the national industry association and a big player in this ...
Gut food is good food
Recipe: Asian Chicken and Cabbage Salad
Feeding your intestinal microbes doesn't take courage, just a gut sense and some simple recipes, such as this Asian salad full of flora-friendly ingredients
By Louise Crosby
I’m not one to make a long list of New Year’s resolutions, but there are a couple of things I’d like to accomplish in 2016. One is to clean out my attic, the other is to feed my microbes.
Yes, microbes. All of a sudden, it seems, there are new books and TV shows about the bacteria that live in our intestines. Scientists have discovered they play a crucial role in our health, affecting everything from how we digest our food to the strength of our immune system and our outlook on life. Imbalances in our flora have been linked to disease, obesity, and depression. But how we feed these microorganisms is key: junk food kills them off, but a diet high in high-fibre fruits and vegetables, complex carbohydrates, nuts, seeds, probiotics, prebiotics, and fermented ...
Warm, cheesy and super easy
Food: Cauliflower Gratin
A stray cat looking for warmth on a frigid winter's day serves as a furry reminder about the importance of comfort food, such as cauliflower gratin
By Louise Crosby
Late last winter, as the snow was melting, a strange creature appeared at our back door. Turns out it was a cat, or more accurately, half a cat, with bony haunches and huge matted clumps of black fur. He had obviously survived a terrible ordeal, an unusually harsh Canadian winter, apparently with little food. We fed him, of course, and he stuck around, making our back deck his home through the spring, summer and fall. And what an appetite. By late November he was as solid as a little black bear, with a good, thick coat.
We called him Charlie because he’s male and because it rings nicely with Chicklet, the name of our official cat. He’s a lovely guy, just a little skittish, and particular about who approaches him and from what angle, and he absolutely, positively, will not come ...
